Job Queue Monitoring with Laravel Horizon and Redis Integration

In Laravel applications, time-consuming tasks like sending emails, image processing, API calls, and report generation are offloaded to a queue system. Laravel Horizon is a dashboard and configuration tool that lets you monitor Redis-based queues in real time, auto-scale worker counts, and manage failed jobs. This guide covers every step from Horizon installation to production deployment.

What Is Laravel Horizon?

Horizon is Laravel's official queue management package. It adds a real-time dashboard, automatic worker balancing, metrics, and a notification system on top of php artisan queue:work. Horizon works exclusively with the Redis queue driver - database or SQS drivers are not supported.

Installation and Redis Configuration

Horizon requires Redis to be running on your server. Set the queue driver to Redis in Laravel's .env file, then install Horizon:

# Install Redis (Ubuntu/Debian)
sudo apt install redis-server
sudo systemctl enable redis-server

# Install Horizon
composer require laravel/horizon
php artisan horizon:install

# .env settings
QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis
REDIS_HOST=127.0.0.1
REDIS_PORT=6379

The horizon:install command creates the config/horizon.php configuration file and Horizon dashboard assets. Access the dashboard at /horizon.

Queue and Worker Configuration

Horizon's power lies in defining different worker counts for different queues. For example, email sending can be high priority while report generation is low priority:

'environments' => [
    'production' => [
        'supervisor-1' => [
            'maxProcesses' => 10,
            'balanceMaxShift' => 1,
            'balanceCooldown' => 3,
            'balance' => 'auto',
            'queue' => [
                'high',
                'default',
                'low',
            ],
            'tries' => 3,
            'timeout' => 300,
            'memory' => 128,
        ],
    ],
],

Creating and Dispatching Jobs

In Laravel, jobs are classes that implement the ShouldQueue interface. Horizon manages these jobs through Redis. You can dispatch jobs to different queues with different priorities:

class ProcessOrder implements ShouldQueue
{
    use Dispatchable, InteractsWithQueue, Queueable, SerializesModels;

    public int $tries = 3;
    public int $timeout = 120;
    public int $maxExceptions = 2;

    public function handle(): void
    {
        // Order processing logic
    }

    public function failed(Throwable $e): void
    {
        // Send notification on failure
        Notification::route('slack', config('services.slack.webhook'))
            ->notify(new JobFailedNotification($e));
    }
}

// Dispatch to high priority queue
ProcessOrder::dispatch($order)->onQueue('high');

// Delayed job (run after 5 minutes)
ProcessOrder::dispatch($order)->delay(now()->addMinutes(5));

Production Deployment

Running Horizon in production requires the Supervisor process manager. Supervisor monitors the Horizon process and automatically restarts it if it crashes. We covered Supervisor setup in detail in our Laravel Hosting guide.

[program:horizon]
process_name=%(program_name)s
command=php /var/www/app/artisan horizon
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=www-data
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/log/horizon.log
stopwaitsecs=3600

Restarting Horizon During Deployment

After code updates, Horizon needs to be restarted to load the new code. The horizon:terminate command waits for current jobs to finish, then Supervisor starts Horizon with the new code:

#!/bin/bash
php artisan down
git pull origin main
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
php artisan migrate --force
php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache
php artisan horizon:terminate  # Graceful restart
php artisan up

For dashboard security, define an authorization gate in HorizonServiceProvider. In production, only admin users should access the dashboard. Run Redis and Horizon with high performance on Hosted Cloud servers. For more on queue monitoring, check the official Laravel Horizon documentation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Laravel Horizon enhances Redis-based queue management with a real-time dashboard, automatic worker balancing, and detailed metrics. Combined with Supervisor, you get a reliable and scalable job processing infrastructure in production. Use horizon:terminate for graceful restarts during deployment to prevent job loss.